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Thursday, 20 September 2012

Homo Empathicus (Jeremy Rifkin)



Recently I gave a seven minute presentation on what it is that makes us care about the environment. This presentation was given to fellow students who were partaking in a training course called Green Steps @ Uni. We were all required to give a presentation on a topic of our choice as long as it was sustainability related. I chose to give my presentation on what it is that makes us care about the environment as since conducting a literature review on the topic I have become quite interested in the subject.
In this presentation I basically summarised my findings of my literature review and came to the conclusion, with the help of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’ s current Love Not Loss campaign, that we care about the environment due to the love we feel for the natural world. This love for the natural world comes about through our human ability to feel empathy.  It is through empathy for nature and fellow creatures that we feel a sense of compassion and therefore love and it is through this love that we want to protect the natural world (Futerra 2010, Reis & Roth 2009).

The below TED talk by Jeremy Rifkin entitled The Empathic Civilisation alludes to this importance of feeling empathy for the natural world. He suggests that humans are hard wired to feel empathy and is a part of our neurology. He refers to humans as Homo Empathicus, and that over time our ability to empathise has evolved and extended to beyond our immediate tribe to that of our nation. Currently, Rifkin suggests, due to technology our empathy now extends to the whole world and with this extension, theoretically we should be able to extend empathy to other creatures and the biosphere. Rifkin believes it is by extending our empathy to other creatures and the biosphere that we may have a chance at protecting our planet.  However, he sends a word of warning that it is our current political context that is threatening Homo Empathicus and causing us to put empathy aside. If we disallow our political context to influence our ability to empathise with that which is beyond us than we potentially have a means of causing movement to protect nature.

Although Jeremy Rifkin’s idea resonates with me and supports the claims I have made in my literature review and recent presentation, I think I need to delve into this idea further and deeper. In doing so I think I may be able to pull out exactly why empathy and compassion cause us to want to protect the environment.  I may be passionate about this idea but if I cannot articulate it well and with a real conviction then it is not strong enough to put into an environmental education philosophy.



Futerra 2010 Branding Biodiversity Futerra Sustainability Communications http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/Branding_Biodiversity.pdf, 16 July 2011

Reis G and Roth W 2009 A Feeling for the Environment: Emotion Talk in/for Pedagogy of Public Environmental Education The Journal of Environmental Education 41(2):71-87.

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